UTTAR PRADESH

 AIAWU Begins Adivasi Rights Campaign

THE Adivasis of Uttar Pradesh (UP) have probably had the worst deal in the country. After independence, Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant declared that there were no Adivasis in UP; so the Kols, Korbas, Gonds, Van Gujars, Boxas, Tharus and many others, largely in the Terai area and in Kaimur and Vindhyachal, became the target of dispossession, were evicted from their ancestral land by the forest department, landlords and land mafias, and were reduced to bonded labour on the land that was theirs from time immemorial.

The All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) took up their cause, especially the demand of these tribes to be protected under schedule 6 of the constitution. A number of successful land struggles were launched in Allahabad, Chandauli, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra districts since 1989 and an MLA of the Kol tribe, Ram Kripal, who is a member of the AIAWU general council, has successfully won the Meja seat twice on the CPI(M) ticket, defeating the BSP and other casteist forces by a large margin. This reflects the support the CPI(M) and the AIAWU enjoy as a result of their consistent struggle. So it was natural that Ram Kripal presided over the first major convention of tribals, attended by nearly 5,000 people. The convention was held at Dhanaula hill, near the spot where AIAWU leader Babbe Kol was murdered in 1995. Here, since that time, the police and landlords had earlier foiled any attempt of the people to gather.

The programme began on October 29 with a mass rally where the chief guest was the Tripura minister of tribal welfare, rural development and youth affairs, Jitendra Choudhury. He pointed out that Mirzapur had more arable land than Tripura, which could bring a far better life to its people if it could be used to benefit the masses. So far, however, its benefits have been restricted to a handful of people while the mass of people live in misery. He explained how in Tripura, under a Left Front government, the stress was on developing human resources to the maximum. In Tripura, nearly 74 per cent of the population is literate and the prospect is that illiteracy will be eradicated by 2005. In Mirzapur, on the other hand, only 31 per cent of the people are literate. Similarly, because of the policies of the Left front government of Tripura in the case of administrative centres, with banks serving the rural people, and with schools, hospitals and the like, a remote state like Tripura was far ahead of Mirzapur which was on the main rail link of India and had considerable resources. He laid stress on the importance of political will on part of the state and central governments. At the same time, there is need for the people to ensure that their struggles give them the organisation, strength and political power to achieve the right to get the government they need.

Addressing the rally, CPI(M) Central Committee member and AIAWU joint secretary Suneet Chopra, CPI(M) state secretariat member and AIAWU state secretary Ambika Prasad Mishra, CPI(M) state secretariat member Hira Lal Yadav, Ram Kripal (MLA), CPI(M) and AIAWU district leaders Pyarelal Jaiswal, Shiv Kumar, Suresh, Om Praksh, Shanti Prakash and Chinta, and AIKS leader Birju Singh stressed the gross injustice being done to the tribal people of UP. They also highlighted the need for these people to organise on a class basis and link up with the democratic movement to ensure that they get their due.

On October 30, AIAWU joint secretary Suneet Chopra inaugurated the tribal people’s convention, attended by nearly 1,000 delegates, many of whom stayed overnight, from 35 villages. Chopra pointed out that the tribal people had fought against oppression and exploitation consistently since the colonial period and had protected their forests better than the way forest officials, who are in collusion with contractors and jungle mafia, are doing. As a result of their struggles, they fought for and won concessions under schedule 6, but these were being denied them in the class interest of the capitalists and landlords.

With its character of dispossessing and destroying the small producers, capitalism only holds out for the tribal people the promise of their extermination and dispossession, and places them in the lowest rungs of the reserve army of labour as migrant labour or bonded labour. The caste system in rural India has further strengthened this threat, as this system refuses even to accept all the human beings as equals and relegates the tribal people to the level of untouchables. Of late, their strength and capacity to fight for their rights is getting further undermined by the extremist and separatist forces. The latter isolate these tribal masses from the mainstream of India’s people struggling for land, work, proper working conditions, and thus prevents them from asserting their right to access to whatever benefits the Indian constitution has bestowed on them.

The AIAWU leader stressed the importance of the peasants’ and agricultural labourers’ movements voicing the demands of Adivasis on an all-India basis and ensuring that the tribal people take their proper place in the struggles for land, work, protective legislation and social equality, which are going on all over the country.

After the inaugural address, 32 delegates from different villages in Mirzapur and Sonbhadra districts spoke. They demanded that the Kol, Korwa and other tribes must be recognised as scheduled tribes and that the Gonds  (who have been recognised recently as a as scheduled tribe) must be afforded the concessions that are their due as a scheduled tribe. It will be noted that the district administration is yet to provide the Gonds these benefits. These delegates raised the issue of grazing land and forest land being illegally occupied by landlords and forest officials who were even given documents of possession while the Adivasis are being evicted mercilessly and even being killed on the pretext of being Naxalites. They raised the issue of bondage, of the need for a comprehensive legislation to protect agricultural labour, the improved functioning of government schools, and an increase in the irrigation, drinking water and health facilities. They demanded the issuance of pattas for the land that is already in their occupation, possession where only pattas have been given, old age and widows pensions, scholarships for students, and proper rations for school going children.

Jitendra Choudhary of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and Chinta of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) then greeted the session.

Concluding the session, state AIAWU secretary Ambika Prasad Mishra congratulated the people for their excellent turn-out, the patience with which they had followed the deliberations and the forthrightness with which they had put forward their demands. He stressed the importance of systematically building up campaigns through campaign committees and the organisational framework of the AIAWU. He then proposed the names for two action committees to carry forward the struggles in Mirzapur and Sonbhadra. He stressed the necessity of taking the process of holding such conventions covering Mirzapur and Sonbhadra districts down to the grass roots. It should be repeated in other districts and then in the Kaimur region as a whole, in order to build up a sound basis to secure the legitimate demands of the tribal people of Uttar Pradesh who had been ignored for so long.